Introducing: New Orleans street magician Jude Dubuisson, whose magical talent for finding lost things was disrupted by Hurricane Katrina. Can he recover his abilities in time to solve the murder of a god?

Series alert:The City of Lost Fortunes is the 1st of the Crescent City novels.

You might also like: Suzanne Johnson's Sentinels of New Orleans, another intricately plotted urban fantasy series set in the Big Easy.

What's it all about?: Unsettling, insightful, and hilarious. Saunders writes brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war cutting to the core of the contemporary experience. These stories take on the big questions and explore the fault lines of our own morality, delving into the questions of what makes us good and what makes us human.

Critics say: “It’s no exaggeration to say that short story master George Saunders helped change the trajectory of American fiction.”—The Wall Street Journal

About the author: Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-winner Ken Liu is the author of the Dandelion Dynasty historical fantasy series as well as the translator of Cixin Liu's SF epic The Three-Body Problem and its sequels.

Don't miss: "The Paper Menagerie," which explores the complicated relationship between a Chinese-American boy and his immigrant mother; "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary," about wartime atrocities.

What it's about: Rogues! Who, according to anthology editor George R.R. Martin, "go by many names, and...turn up in stories of all sorts, in every genre under the sun."

Contains: 21 original stories by a powerhouse roster of writers, including both genre stalwarts (such as Patrick Rothfuss and Connie Willis) and authors best known for their work in other areas (including Gillian Flynn and Steven Saylor).

Acclaim: ''Salaam treats words like the seductive weapons they are. She wields them to weave fierce, gorgeous stories that stroke your sensibilities, challenge your preconceptions, and leave you breathless with their beauty."

"This collection of moving stories interleaves many themes, perhaps the most effective for me being the alienation of the foreigner....Throughout the language is stunning, like music become words. I found my own mind dazzled and my imagination stretched to keep up with the flow of images."